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I don't understand the problem... There's a pandemic, so people in areas that are more affected shouldn't be traveling as much. The US has been heavily affected

I don't understand the problem... There's a pandemic, so people in areas that are more affected shouldn't be traveling as much. The US has been heavily affected, therefore Americans shouldn't be traveling internationally without a really good reason. Americans are not experiencing what Sri Lankans experience, because Americans can't go anywhere, and mostly shouldn't be going anywhere; Sri Lankans (under normal circumstances) experience real pain because of visa issues. The article doesn't bother to interview any Americans that these travel restrictions have caused actual problems for. That would have been more helpful than interviewing a European academic. An anecdote (or some actual data) would helpful describe the real problem instead of just saying, "Take that, America!"

vmchale 6y ago
> There's a pandemic, so people in areas that are more affected shouldn't be traveling as much. Indeed, but people from places like Thailand are allowed to travel because their nation has the pandemic under control! Why should the US be so behind Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and so on? It's not for lack of money. > Americans are not experiencing what Sri Lankans experience, because Americans can't go anywhere, and mostly shouldn't be going anywhere; Sri Lankans (under normal circumstances) experience real pain because of visa issues. I agree. We are still highly privileged.
jjcon 6y ago
Yeah I don’t really get the influx of nationalistic clickbait on HN lately... it’s super bizarre
- fermienrico 6y ago
  The world feels like its falling apart with nationalism. Journalists should be more uniting and bring the world together, instead they're chasing what the readers want - a spice mix that gets people high on nationlism. Don't worry, we've got a whole load of it right here in US as well. Remember the pale blue dot? That pale blue dot is festered with a disease, and that's not just COVID-19.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    I hope a couple years from now we look back on these times with a lessons learned mentality and a stronger sense of fellowship as a world. If we can get here I know we can get out, I just dearly hope it is sooner rather than later.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  The US has a lot of issues that are not the norm for wealthy, developed countries. Some ways of talking about that are more socially acceptable and/or more effective than others. It's generally not acceptable to say things like "The third world country of America." Most people don't have much sympathy for poor Americans. But travel restrictions are an issue that will mostly impact well-heeled Americans. So I see this title as code for "Your country is so in the toilet, it's actually starting to hurt the rich people, you fools! Maybe you should finally bother to do something about it!" It's not PC and not socially acceptable to express ideas like that more baldly. It's much more acceptable to post articles like this one that say the same thing more implicitly about topics people with money might actually personally care about.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    I know your really just trolling and it doesn’t really matter cause this whole thread was removed by the mods anyway for breaking the rules... but if you really think that the richest country in the world needs so much help I think you should get out of whatever bubble you are in and examine some material facts. Do they have issues absolutely yes but so does every country. US, Europeans, nobody can travel everywhere right now. Furthermore the US is doing better on coronavirus than plenty of countries per capita (Belgium, Italy, France, Sweden, UK for starters). The world is particularly stressful right now but that doesn’t mean we should result to nationalistic flame bait. We’re stronger with the US, democratic nations should stick together not bicker endlessly.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      I wasn't trolling. The US is one of only a few countries without maternity leave. The others are extremely poor. Most developed countries have some kind of national healthcare coverage. Our employer-based insurance has all kinds of problems associated with it. Etc. You sound like you aren't American (with referring to it as "they"). I am American and spent nearly six years homeless and got to see the dark underbelly and how very hard we intentionally make it for people when something goes wrong. Most other developed countries seem to do a better job of helping people when something goes wrong.
look_lookatme 6y ago
Let the world have its little schadenfreude dance.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- BrendanD 6y ago
  Schadenfreude? More like nauseated disbelief at watching irrational populism and its concomitant intolerance tear the world asunder.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I worry that you're just tossing insults at the wall. A poor pandemic response is surely not a good thing, but it's hard to see how it constitutes irrational populism or intolerance.
    - DFHippie 6y ago
      The poor pandemic response is just one symptom of our societal malaise. I think that's the point. One might expect a country to pull itself together and work for the common good in a crisis. The U.S. no longer seems capable of doing that. We're like Ahab strapped to the Moby Dick, preferring to die exacting vengeance than to live.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Is there reason to believe that the US's poor pandemic response is due to a general unwillingness to pull together? There are scattered stories of people hosting irresponsible gatherings and being jerks about masks, but those are available in every country I know of.
        BrendanD 6y ago
        I think it is (although my comment about populism was not directly solely at the U.S.). As an outsider, I would attribute the poor pandemic response to lack of coherent leadership. The U.S. federal government is obviously incapable of pulling itself together across partisan lines for the greater good of the people it is supposed to serve. Even if you disagree about politics, the numbers do not lie. Just north of the border, Canada is doing literally ten times better (for the moment).
benrbray 6y ago
I'm someone who the travel restrictions have caused actual problems for. In March I accepted an offer for my first full-time job out of school at a company in Tokyo. I was scheduled to move in May, but the travel ban put a halt on my visa process. In the meantime, I've started working remotely, but it has been extremely difficult due to being remote with the 13 hour time difference. This certainly isn't how I expected to start my first job. Our reaction to the pandemic has been a huge disappointment. Since March, I've been watching closely as other countries see their first cases, make the tough decision to lock down, wait it out a few months, then finally reopen as cases fall. Here, we never really committed to the lockdown. Where I live in Georgia, it was only a few weeks ago that the governor started recommending mask usage. Needless to say, I don't plan ever to return to the United States once I leave. This country is hopeless.
- jkingsbery 6y ago
  I'm sorry to hear it. I'm sure it's been a frustrating experience, but one that would be interesting to tell and useful for people to know to understand the consequences of bad decisions. A well-written version of the article would have included one or two interviews from people like you.
- dorchadas 6y ago
  > Needless to say, I don't plan ever to return to the United States once I leave. This country is hopeless. Indeed. I was hoping this year would be my year to get out too, with a masters program abroad. Now, I'm not sure if it's wise to do that, especially as it was in finance and the finance sector in that country's taken a huge hit, and connections I have there aren't optimistic about it hiring well anytime soon.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I'm sure it's very disappointing but I'd point out that, as you probably know, Japan has travel bans that apply to the vast majority of the planet: https://www.japan.travel/en/coronavirus/ https://www.japan.travel/en/coronavirus/ It's hardly some unique ban that applies to the US.
29athrowaway 6y ago
The problem is the decadent conspiracy driven culture that makes a significant portion of the US population to fight initiatives that are in their best interest. That's why the US is now unable to contain the virus. For every reasonable person there's a tin foil hat that thinks that Bill Gates wants to forcibly vaccinate them with a nanoscale identification chip under the guise of a coronavirus vaccine. Or that masks don't work and are against their freedom. Or that vaccines cause autism, or that the earth is flat, or that diversity is bad or Trump is not a racist. What a fucking circus. How could the country that sent men to the moon end up like this? Plus, traveling to the US is not what it used to be. There are better destinations in the world with more historic richness and more beautiful architecture and scenery that do not require a stranger to check your social media activity, taking your shoes off and walking feet on a nasty airport carpet full of skin diseases or being yelled "Go back to your country" by a homeless junkie at a Starbucks (the latter happened to me).
- thu2111 6y ago
  there's a tin foil hat that thinks that Bill Gates wants to forcibly vaccinate them with a nanoscale identification chip under the guise of a coronavirus vaccine I don't know if that's really rising to the level of a tinfoil hat belief. Bill Gates is very much interested in a COVID vaccine, as you'd expect given his prior work. The "nanoscale chip" thing comes from this research he funded: https://www.sciencealert.com/an-invisible-quantum-dot-tattoo-is-being-suggested-to-id-vaccinated-kids https://www.sciencealert.com/an-invisible-quantum-dot-tattoo... The idea is indeed to implant a vaccination record in the skin. It's not a chip and it seems they didn't decide yet what the record would actually contain, so the 'tracking' part that gets people worked up might not be valid depending on the precise details of how the tech is used. Done right it could be very cool, IMO. As for forced vaccination, BillG seems to have gone back and forth on that one. Sometimes he talks about the importance of persuading people to take it. But the idea he wants to force people to take the vaccine comes from this part of an interview he gave: “Here, we clearly need a vaccine that works in the upper age range because they’re most at risk of that,” Gates said. “And doing that so that you amp it up so it works in older people and yet you don’t have side effects … you know, if we have 1 in 10,000 side effects, that’s way more, 700,000 people who will suffer from that. So, really understanding the safety at gigantic scale across all age ranges — you know, pregnant, male, female, undernourished, existing comorbidities — it’s very, very hard. And that actual decision of, OK, let’s go and give this vaccine to the entire world — governments will have to be involved because there will be some risk and indemnification needed before that can be decided on.” Note the last part, where he says that in order to "give this vaccine to the entire world", governments will "have to be involved" because it will create bad side effects (they will "suffer") in some hypothetically large number of people and therefore, there will need to be "indemnification". It's very ambiguous here whether he's imagining governments will need to be involved merely to make vaccine manufacturers immune from lawsuits, or whether they need to be involved to push people into take it, as governments routinely do today. At any rate, it's interesting you think this is a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. It's really not. Quantum dots tracking if you had a Gates Foundation funded COVID vaccine is something discussed in scientific journals.
JSavageOne 6y ago
> I don't understand the problem It's pretty infuriating seeing Americans say that there's nothing wrong with people being trapped in their own countries and unable to move around. Nobody should be trapped in a country, and nobody's movement should be restricted by their nationality.
- DamnYuppie 6y ago
  So sovereign countries have no right to refuse entry to those who are not their citizens?
  - closeparen 6y ago
    "Sovereign" means they have sufficient force and technical ability, not a moral right.
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  > Nobody should be trapped in a country, and nobody's movement should be restricted by their nationality. What an absurd sense of entitlement. You're not entitled to travel anywhere on earth despite your utopian dreams.
  - JSavageOne 6y ago
    > What an absurd sense of entitlement. You're not entitled to travel anywhere on earth despite your utopian dreams. How ironic that you're calling me entitled, and then in the same breath you tell me that my freedom of movement must abide by your personal opinions regarding freedom. You'd make a great grunt soldier in the North Korean regime. You can trap your citizens in their country, and tell them they're "entitled" for wanting to leave and pursue their "utopian dreams". What a stupid comment.
    - DuskStar 6y ago
      I think no one should be trapped within their country because their country won't let them leave. Being trapped because no one wants to take you is a very different situation.
closeparen 6y ago
Many Americans held on to fantasies of escape to countries with functioning institutions in case of a collapse like this one. We never thought it would be us trapped in a country going down in flames. It's my friends with Taiwanese passports who have tickets to freedom and safety, and my US passport that commits me to die. This is at least an interesting and newsworthy inversion!
cm2187 6y ago
More than half of the US population doesn't even have a passport [1]. And I suspect the half that does has a majority of people who read religiously the NYT and have no plan to travel during this pandemic anyway. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/804627/us-passports-in-circulation/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/804627/us-passports-in-c...

vmchale 6y ago

> There's a pandemic, so people in areas that are more affected shouldn't be traveling as much. Indeed, but people from places like Thailand are allowed to travel because their nation has the pandemic under control! Why should the US be so behind Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and so on? It's not for lack of money. > Americans are not experiencing what Sri Lankans experience, because Americans can't go anywhere, and mostly shouldn't be going anywhere; Sri Lankans (under normal circumstances) experience real pain because of visa issues. I agree. We are still highly privileged.

jjcon 6y ago

Yeah I don’t really get the influx of nationalistic clickbait on HN lately... it’s super bizarre

fermienrico 6y ago
The world feels like its falling apart with nationalism. Journalists should be more uniting and bring the world together, instead they're chasing what the readers want - a spice mix that gets people high on nationlism. Don't worry, we've got a whole load of it right here in US as well. Remember the pale blue dot? That pale blue dot is festered with a disease, and that's not just COVID-19.
- jjcon 6y ago
  I hope a couple years from now we look back on these times with a lessons learned mentality and a stronger sense of fellowship as a world. If we can get here I know we can get out, I just dearly hope it is sooner rather than later.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
The US has a lot of issues that are not the norm for wealthy, developed countries. Some ways of talking about that are more socially acceptable and/or more effective than others. It's generally not acceptable to say things like "The third world country of America." Most people don't have much sympathy for poor Americans. But travel restrictions are an issue that will mostly impact well-heeled Americans. So I see this title as code for "Your country is so in the toilet, it's actually starting to hurt the rich people, you fools! Maybe you should finally bother to do something about it!" It's not PC and not socially acceptable to express ideas like that more baldly. It's much more acceptable to post articles like this one that say the same thing more implicitly about topics people with money might actually personally care about.
- jjcon 6y ago
  I know your really just trolling and it doesn’t really matter cause this whole thread was removed by the mods anyway for breaking the rules... but if you really think that the richest country in the world needs so much help I think you should get out of whatever bubble you are in and examine some material facts. Do they have issues absolutely yes but so does every country. US, Europeans, nobody can travel everywhere right now. Furthermore the US is doing better on coronavirus than plenty of countries per capita (Belgium, Italy, France, Sweden, UK for starters). The world is particularly stressful right now but that doesn’t mean we should result to nationalistic flame bait. We’re stronger with the US, democratic nations should stick together not bicker endlessly.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    I wasn't trolling. The US is one of only a few countries without maternity leave. The others are extremely poor. Most developed countries have some kind of national healthcare coverage. Our employer-based insurance has all kinds of problems associated with it. Etc. You sound like you aren't American (with referring to it as "they"). I am American and spent nearly six years homeless and got to see the dark underbelly and how very hard we intentionally make it for people when something goes wrong. Most other developed countries seem to do a better job of helping people when something goes wrong.

look_lookatme 6y ago

Let the world have its little schadenfreude dance.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
BrendanD 6y ago
Schadenfreude? More like nauseated disbelief at watching irrational populism and its concomitant intolerance tear the world asunder.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I worry that you're just tossing insults at the wall. A poor pandemic response is surely not a good thing, but it's hard to see how it constitutes irrational populism or intolerance.
  - DFHippie 6y ago
    The poor pandemic response is just one symptom of our societal malaise. I think that's the point. One might expect a country to pull itself together and work for the common good in a crisis. The U.S. no longer seems capable of doing that. We're like Ahab strapped to the Moby Dick, preferring to die exacting vengeance than to live.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Is there reason to believe that the US's poor pandemic response is due to a general unwillingness to pull together? There are scattered stories of people hosting irresponsible gatherings and being jerks about masks, but those are available in every country I know of.
      - BrendanD 6y ago
        I think it is (although my comment about populism was not directly solely at the U.S.). As an outsider, I would attribute the poor pandemic response to lack of coherent leadership. The U.S. federal government is obviously incapable of pulling itself together across partisan lines for the greater good of the people it is supposed to serve. Even if you disagree about politics, the numbers do not lie. Just north of the border, Canada is doing literally ten times better (for the moment).

benrbray 6y ago

I'm someone who the travel restrictions have caused actual problems for. In March I accepted an offer for my first full-time job out of school at a company in Tokyo. I was scheduled to move in May, but the travel ban put a halt on my visa process. In the meantime, I've started working remotely, but it has been extremely difficult due to being remote with the 13 hour time difference. This certainly isn't how I expected to start my first job. Our reaction to the pandemic has been a huge disappointment. Since March, I've been watching closely as other countries see their first cases, make the tough decision to lock down, wait it out a few months, then finally reopen as cases fall. Here, we never really committed to the lockdown. Where I live in Georgia, it was only a few weeks ago that the governor started recommending mask usage. Needless to say, I don't plan ever to return to the United States once I leave. This country is hopeless.

jkingsbery 6y ago
I'm sorry to hear it. I'm sure it's been a frustrating experience, but one that would be interesting to tell and useful for people to know to understand the consequences of bad decisions. A well-written version of the article would have included one or two interviews from people like you.
dorchadas 6y ago
> Needless to say, I don't plan ever to return to the United States once I leave. This country is hopeless. Indeed. I was hoping this year would be my year to get out too, with a masters program abroad. Now, I'm not sure if it's wise to do that, especially as it was in finance and the finance sector in that country's taken a huge hit, and connections I have there aren't optimistic about it hiring well anytime soon.
ghaff 6y ago
I'm sure it's very disappointing but I'd point out that, as you probably know, Japan has travel bans that apply to the vast majority of the planet: https://www.japan.travel/en/coronavirus/ https://www.japan.travel/en/coronavirus/ It's hardly some unique ban that applies to the US.

29athrowaway 6y ago

The problem is the decadent conspiracy driven culture that makes a significant portion of the US population to fight initiatives that are in their best interest. That's why the US is now unable to contain the virus. For every reasonable person there's a tin foil hat that thinks that Bill Gates wants to forcibly vaccinate them with a nanoscale identification chip under the guise of a coronavirus vaccine. Or that masks don't work and are against their freedom. Or that vaccines cause autism, or that the earth is flat, or that diversity is bad or Trump is not a racist. What a fucking circus. How could the country that sent men to the moon end up like this? Plus, traveling to the US is not what it used to be. There are better destinations in the world with more historic richness and more beautiful architecture and scenery that do not require a stranger to check your social media activity, taking your shoes off and walking feet on a nasty airport carpet full of skin diseases or being yelled "Go back to your country" by a homeless junkie at a Starbucks (the latter happened to me).

thu2111 6y ago
there's a tin foil hat that thinks that Bill Gates wants to forcibly vaccinate them with a nanoscale identification chip under the guise of a coronavirus vaccine I don't know if that's really rising to the level of a tinfoil hat belief. Bill Gates is very much interested in a COVID vaccine, as you'd expect given his prior work. The "nanoscale chip" thing comes from this research he funded: https://www.sciencealert.com/an-invisible-quantum-dot-tattoo-is-being-suggested-to-id-vaccinated-kids https://www.sciencealert.com/an-invisible-quantum-dot-tattoo... The idea is indeed to implant a vaccination record in the skin. It's not a chip and it seems they didn't decide yet what the record would actually contain, so the 'tracking' part that gets people worked up might not be valid depending on the precise details of how the tech is used. Done right it could be very cool, IMO. As for forced vaccination, BillG seems to have gone back and forth on that one. Sometimes he talks about the importance of persuading people to take it. But the idea he wants to force people to take the vaccine comes from this part of an interview he gave: “Here, we clearly need a vaccine that works in the upper age range because they’re most at risk of that,” Gates said. “And doing that so that you amp it up so it works in older people and yet you don’t have side effects … you know, if we have 1 in 10,000 side effects, that’s way more, 700,000 people who will suffer from that. So, really understanding the safety at gigantic scale across all age ranges — you know, pregnant, male, female, undernourished, existing comorbidities — it’s very, very hard. And that actual decision of, OK, let’s go and give this vaccine to the entire world — governments will have to be involved because there will be some risk and indemnification needed before that can be decided on.” Note the last part, where he says that in order to "give this vaccine to the entire world", governments will "have to be involved" because it will create bad side effects (they will "suffer") in some hypothetically large number of people and therefore, there will need to be "indemnification". It's very ambiguous here whether he's imagining governments will need to be involved merely to make vaccine manufacturers immune from lawsuits, or whether they need to be involved to push people into take it, as governments routinely do today. At any rate, it's interesting you think this is a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. It's really not. Quantum dots tracking if you had a Gates Foundation funded COVID vaccine is something discussed in scientific journals.

JSavageOne 6y ago

> I don't understand the problem It's pretty infuriating seeing Americans say that there's nothing wrong with people being trapped in their own countries and unable to move around. Nobody should be trapped in a country, and nobody's movement should be restricted by their nationality.

DamnYuppie 6y ago
So sovereign countries have no right to refuse entry to those who are not their citizens?
- closeparen 6y ago
  "Sovereign" means they have sufficient force and technical ability, not a moral right.
ciarannolan 6y ago
> Nobody should be trapped in a country, and nobody's movement should be restricted by their nationality. What an absurd sense of entitlement. You're not entitled to travel anywhere on earth despite your utopian dreams.
- JSavageOne 6y ago
  > What an absurd sense of entitlement. You're not entitled to travel anywhere on earth despite your utopian dreams. How ironic that you're calling me entitled, and then in the same breath you tell me that my freedom of movement must abide by your personal opinions regarding freedom. You'd make a great grunt soldier in the North Korean regime. You can trap your citizens in their country, and tell them they're "entitled" for wanting to leave and pursue their "utopian dreams". What a stupid comment.
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    I think no one should be trapped within their country because their country won't let them leave. Being trapped because no one wants to take you is a very different situation.

closeparen 6y ago

Many Americans held on to fantasies of escape to countries with functioning institutions in case of a collapse like this one. We never thought it would be us trapped in a country going down in flames. It's my friends with Taiwanese passports who have tickets to freedom and safety, and my US passport that commits me to die. This is at least an interesting and newsworthy inversion!

cm2187 6y ago

More than half of the US population doesn't even have a passport [1]. And I suspect the half that does has a majority of people who read religiously the NYT and have no plan to travel during this pandemic anyway. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/804627/us-passports-in-circulation/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/804627/us-passports-in-c...